Coming out to the American public is the probably the first comedy spoof of the horror films we have come to known over the years, "Shaun of the Dead". The star of the film is British actor Simon Pegg and he recently spoke to blackfilm.com in regards to the film and the comedy aspects of it.

DO YOU FEEL THERE WAS A HOMOEROTIC PART BETWEEN ED AND
SHAUN?

PEGG: I think there's definitely a love story there, you know, I think there's a kind of inter-romance of sorts, because they are sort of inseparable, and I don't think it would probably ever physically manifest itself, you know, because they're too uptight. Yeah, it's, you know, we all say that the real love story is between Ed and Shaun, and so yeah, and I love that kind of thing, I think that's a great - it's always fun to play with those kind of subtext, particularly with sort of those kind of uptight straight lives.

IS THIS FILM A SPOOF OF 'DAWN OF THE DEAD?'

PEGG: I think the only thing that's a spoof about it really
is the title, obviously, is a bad pun. The worst joke in the movie, I
apologize for it. When we started writing the film, we kind of came up
with this title, and it stuck. But a spoof implies that you're making
fun of something, whereas I think in the film, the zombie element is completely
true, and we don't ever - they're never comic, you know, it's like another
film has crashed into a romantic comedy. And so, if we're spoofing anything,
we're spoofing romantic comedies. You know, the zombie element itself
is done with reverence and good faith. So I suppose if it is a spoof,
it's the
other thing we're spoofing.

WHO ARE SOME OF YOUR COMEDY INFLUENCES?

PEGG: Loads of stuff, I mean, you know I'm a big fan of comedy, and British comedy in particular. I grew up, I was the - when I was - the Pythons were around when I was born, but I found them, when I was older. 'The Young Ones,' and the whole tradition of British
comedy I love. There was a great double act called 'Morecambe and Wise' that existed, they're dead now, but they were an old variety act in the U.K., very, very funny. Laurel and Hardy I used to love when I was a kid, you know, I loved that. I mean in a way, when you looked at Laurel and Hardy, you've got a similar kind of, almost like a similar relation to Ed and Shaun in a way, in that they're kind of sort of both foolish but co-dependent, you know.

WHAT ABOUT 'THE GOONS?'

PEGG: 'The Goons' are great, yeah I love that, Spike Milligan's amazing. I mean, less so for me, because they were a little bit before my time, you know. I've heard, my dad's a big fan of them, and I've heard a few of their radio shows, and you know, they're responsible for, you know, I mean the Pythons came after them, you know, they were one of the first alternative comedy movements, in the U.K. Yeah, I've got a lot of - I love when I look at American comedy, you know I love Bill Hicks, as a stand-up, I thought he was an incredible stand-up comedian, and I love shows like 'Larry Sanders' and 'Seinfeld,' and I'm a huge fan of 'The Simpsons,' I mean, that's a massive influence on me. 'Futurama.' I think at its best, at both their bests, British and American comedy are very similar, it's very dry, very kind of intelligent and we both have our crap comedy as well, but when we're firing all cylinders, we're not that dissimilar. Our senses of humor are quite similar.

WERE YOU INVOLVED IN CASTING?

PEGG: Oh yeah.

HOW DID BILL NIGHY GET INVOLVED?

PEGG: We said, Bill would you like to do this? And he said yes. It was literally that simple.

DID HE KNOW YOUR ORIGINAL SHOW?

PEGG: No, I don't think he did, we sent him the script, you know, he's a good script reader. He reads stuff, and he really loved the script, and he was - we had a meeting with him in the Gretzler Club in London, and just sort of explained it to him, and he was just like - Bill's like one of the coolest men on Earth, and he was just so up for it, him and Penelope, both of whom could have seen it as just a job or just a kind of low grade filler, both threw themselves into the role and were wonderful. And so yeah, he was just, he was up for it, you know.

HOW DO YOU BALANCE SATIRE AND PHYSICAL COMEDY?

PEGG: I don't know, I mean, I've been asked this before,
and it's hard to track a method in that, you know. I think what you do
is, is you write, you keep your eye on the script, and as you read it
back you think, okay it's a little bit too heavy here in terms of comedy,
we need a bit of horror here, or you know, or perhaps this moment is too
funny when it should be a little bit more serious. It's quite an organic
process, you've just gotta - you track it as you go. And then of course
once you get into the edit, you've also got a finished film which you
can start to nip and tuck and stuff, so it's an ongoing thing, I think.
And the social satire is - I mean, zombies are a great metaphor, they've
always been. I think the people that mistake zombies for being sloppy
and just an excuse to have gore, they don't make the best zombie films.
Zombies are a wonderful all-purpose metaphor for humanity. They're not
monsters. They're us. There's no moral agenda behind them, they are human
beings at their most basic, they're feeding
and breeding, that's all they're doing. And they're terrifying for that,
not just because they're dead, which is our greatest fear obviously, but
also because they show us that we're just animals, and actually we're
more scary. Because we want to be angels, you know. So I think the zombie
is a far more complex intellectual monster than anyone thinks it is, you
know.

IS THAT YOUR REASON BEHIND DOING THIS?
PEGG: In some respects, yeah, I mean I love 'Dawn of the Dead,' the original [George] Romero 'Dawn of the Dead.' I love the fact that he managed to create these monsters who at turns sympathetic, tragic, terrifying, and also wanting to shock all the time, you know, it's hilarious.

SOME OF THE ZOMBIES WERE HOOKING UP?

PEGG: Yeah, there was quite a lot of zombie love on the set, you know. They were hanging out together twenty-four seven pretty much, so we kept hearing of these zombie trysts that were going on on-set, which is lovely. Huge zombie orgies.

WAS IT ACTUAL ROMANCE?

PEGG: I think it was - yeah, I think it was real romance. There was some shagging I think, but you know, mainly it was romance.

WAS THERE AN EFFORT TO INCOPORATE MANY DIFFERENT TYPES OF ZOMBIES, RACE, SEXUALITY, DISABILITIES, ET CETERA?

PEGG: I don't know, it's difficult to define a sexuality
of a zombie when they're just walking around, unless they're wearing like
a pride t-shirt or something. Yeah, it's society, and so we wanted a cross
section of the zombies to represent, all the zombies to represent society.
The wheelchair zombie is a friend of mine, Liz, who got into a car accident
when she was seventeen, and I just said to her, look I've never seen a
zombie in a wheelchair, do you want to come and do this, because it'll
look really great. And she's like, yeah of course. So she had a really
great day doing that. So yeah, we wanted to show that society had been
affected in every way. But the trouble is zombies don't really get it
on with each other in the zombie world. The actors might do, but I think
in a way, sexuality becomes irrelevant. The way they breed is to bite
each other, or bite people, so it's a strange kind of - I'm sure you could
write essays on it, you know.

DID YOU HAVE A CHANCE TO DO ANY IMPROVISATION?

PEGG: Well, we're pretty strict with the script, you know, the script is - the way it's written, it's very structured film. There were lots of repeating jokes, there are a lot of lines that recur, "you've got red on you." Every experience that Yvonne and Shaun have, "how are you doing?" "Surviving." All that stuff. There are marks that have to be hit. So we didn't really improvise at all, we did rehearse with the cast for three or four weeks before we started shooting, just so everyone felt comfortable with their lines, and if they wanted to change anything, they could ask us, and we would accommodate their own rhythms and cadences rather. The only two bits that were improvised were - or kind of loosely improvised around, was the bit when we were sitting in the pub in the dark, and I'm sort of saying, "did they want to eat the peanut." And the other peanut, and talk about Ed - get him to do his monkey impression, and he was sort of, no I don't want to do it. That was improvised, and also the bit when he's explaining all the different people in the pub to me, and he's saying oh she used to be a porn star, and every take we did, he called her something different. I think in the film it's cockocidal maniac, but in truth, he must have said twelve or thirteen profane monikers for this poor woman. It actually is the director Edgar's [Wright] mom. I'm sorry, his girlfriend's mom. So that was improvised as well, but otherwise no.

WHAT WAS YOUR INSPIRATION FOR THAT?

PEGG: Well, we're big fans of obviously the Romero trilogy, George's 'Night,' 'Dawn,' and 'Day.' Are the greatest zombie films ever made. Even though George Romero said 'Shaun of the Dead' was his favorite zombie film ever apart from his own, which was nice. In 'Day of the Dead,' there's a zombie called Bob, who's almost like a sort of domesticated zombie, and we loved the idea of having - you know, without giving too much away about the end of the film for the readers, that Shaun could be keeping Ed as a pet. The idea is that nothing changes for Ed, his life - life after death for him is the same. He's just sat there playing his X-Box, you know. And that was the joke. We loved the idea of having - of Shaun having a pet zombie.

WHAT WILL BE ON THE DVD THAT WE DIDN'T SEE IN THE THEATRICAL RELEASE?

PEGG: Lots of stuff. There's - on the British DVD, which
comes out quite soon, there's about the same length of the film again
in extras. In terms of like behind the scenes footage and outtakes and
we have like a gag reel, I believe you call it. Not many deleted scenes
really, most of what you see is what we shot, there are some extended
sequences, and a couple deleted scenes, but there's a photo
gallery, there's four commentaries, there's like six documentaries, there's
a special effects comparison, story board comparison, it's really - I
mean, we're big fans of DVDs, so.

WHO'S RELEASING IT ON DVD?

PEGG: In the U.K., it's Universal.

DO YOU FEEL AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE GETTING THE COMEDY?

PEGG: So far, they really have, I mean so far the American audiences have been more vocal and more, you know, everything with their appreciation than the British audiences. I mean, in Britain we tend to be quite reserved, I mean, really at home, it was great, they laughed a lot, and it was lovely to listen to the audiences here, people would cheer, and scream and clap and laugh, really loudly. And it's kind of like, whoa. You know, there's a couple of jokes, maybe, that - there were two jokes, really, that people don't get here, which is fine, it doesn't matter. The first one is when Shaun says to Ed in the morning, do you want anything from the shop, and he says, He's referring to a very famous ice cream, in the U.K. And the joke is that, you know, that that's the first thing he'd want in the morning is an ice cream, you know. So that. The other thing is, is that when Shaun bumps into the other gang, and there's the alternative group, that joke's very funny on
that level, but a level that you won't get here, is that every member of that group, is a famous British TV personality. And so there's Tim from 'The Office' there, there's people from 'The League of Gentlemen,' 'Black Books,' 'Spaced.'